Category: Kvetching

Hi-def’, where is thy sting?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
I had a little fun shooting the video of the Jones bike. There's plenty of room for gadgetry on that 66cm H-bar; I was going to add a flower vase, but ran out of hose clamps.
I had a little fun shooting the video of the Jones bike. There’s plenty of room for gadgetry on that 66cm H-bar; I was going to add a flower vase, but ran out of hose clamps.

In comments, Patrick O’B. asks whether I’m having trouble deciding which bike to ride since adding a nifty Jones rigid-specific 29er to the Mad Dog fleet.

Nope.

I haven’t been on a bike of any type for a week — a terrorist wasp nailed me in my left ankle during a hike last Wednesday, the sonofabitch swelled up to the size and shade of a ruby-red Texas grapefruit (the ankle, not the terrorist wasp), and I have whiled away the hours since full of Benadryl and bad ideas, trying to get a metric shit-ton of work done with my shoeless left leg propped up on a box.

And the weather has been picture-postcard, Chamber of Commerce, fall-in-Colorado perfect, too.

Gah.

The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff got its closeup today.
The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff got its closeup today.

I did get out for a short while today. The ankle looks more or less like an ankle again, rather than a botulistic bratwurst, and I needed to shoot a bit of HD video for an online review of the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, having just wrapped production on a Jones video. So I spazzed around in Palmer Park for an hour, playing Quentin Ferrentino with a couple of dusty old Hero 3 Black Editions.

The Adventure Cyclist gang and I met with the GoPro people at Interbike, but only editor Mike Deme walked away with one of the new Hero 3+ dinguses, though I thought I batted my eyelashes most fetchingly at the product guy. Bitch.

So I had to make do with obsolete technology in my latest projects, and as usual it is the little people — you, the viewing public — who must suffer.

Still, that makes two videos in two days. Stick that in your hobbit-pipe and smoke it, Peter Jackson.

Interbike 2013: The lap of Luxory

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
The road to Mandalay (Bay) continues this morning from the Luxor, which is named after a famous Egyptian laxative.
The road to Mandalay (Bay) continues this morning from the Luxor, which is named after a famous Egyptian laxative.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (MDM) — It figures that the first familiar face I would see this morning was draped over the skull of Bruce Gordon, who like me is a perennial contender for the title of Grumpiest Old Guy At the Show. I’ve spared you the mugshots. You’re welcome.

We were standing in line at dark-thirty for a cup of Starbutt’s finest and got straight to the kvetching, as a guy will before java is made available in a 20-year-old shopping mall masquerading as a casino-hotel. And afterward, too, come to think of it.

Well, some of us, anyway. One of these years Bruce and I should bring a small square of Astroturf and a couple of patio chairs to the show and while away the hours hollering at people to get the hell off our lawn.

I don’t feel like standing in another Vegas queue this morning — one thing America’s paean to the Triumph of Capitalism shares with the defunct Soviet Union is the requirement that one queue for everything, no matter how worthless and unsatisfying — so breakfast today consists of a grande Americano and a Larabar.

And now I got to shake a leg. Mandalay Bay awaits. It’s showtime.

In like a lion

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 32 Comments
Novara Verita
The Novara Verita from REI.

March, is it? Whose idea was it to make February so short and start Daylight Saving Time on Sunday? Jesus, I take some time away from the blog to do a spot of work from my deathbed and the whole place goes to hell.

I brought some heavyweight class of an upper-respiratory bug home from the North American Handmade Bicycle Show and mostly have been sleeping at The House Back East® to keep from catapulting Herself out of bed and into the madhouse with my coughs, which sound remarkably like an M777 howitzer in action, if M777 howitzers fired 155mm olive-drab snot rockets.

Between booger barrages I have had to crank out the word count for Adventure Cyclist and Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, the latter now back to twice-a-month publication. Doubling up on the funny is heavy lifting when your brain is braising in bacterial tapioca.

The past couple of days have brought some mild improvement, happily, and I’ve even been out and about on the latest review bike, a Novara Verita, one of the steeds in REI’s velo-stable. I’ve tried not to dribble on it, because the green would clash horribly with the nifty blue-and-white color scheme and might even dissolve the tubeset.

I shan’t have access to that refreshing little pasatiempo this weekend, however. The wizards predict rain, snow and wind — to wit, March weather.

Just as well. Another round of deadlines is upon me like some fresh plague, and I might as well stick to embarrassing myself in print instead of upon the bicycle until the sun comes back sometime next week.

Working on my monitor tan

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

Thank God it’s Friday? Not hardly, Bubba. Sure, it’s been one long-ass week, but it’s not over yet. Not for me, anyway.

I have been filling in for absent colleagues here, and chasing deadlines the way a dumb dog chases fast cars there, and the dentist appointment I have scheduled on Tuesday is starting to look like a sunny day at a white, sandy beach full of pulchritudinous women of the female persuasion wearing not very much while delivering a sequence of unlikely and outlandish proposals enhanced by adult beverages shaded by itty-bitty umbrellas.

There have been high points. I got in a nice ride today on the Space Horse, loaded down with panniers front and rear for research purposes, and the arm warmers came off in the first mile or two.

And following my biannual fang-filing I have been cleared for takeoff to someplace warm and sunny, which Bibleburg will not be starting this weekend.

But meanwhile, there’s the pile, and here’s the shovel. …